Fine Print

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

If you’ve ever wondered how rules are invented, try doing anything with people and you’ll soon have an answer.  Even with my limited experience I am amazed at how the collective public mind can and will discover and accomplish every single silly little loophole and every single act of stupidity in a relatively short amount of time.  We must be driven by an internal desire to get away with something because the search to push the boundaries is as inexhaustible as a groundhog’s mission to breech the fence and eat your garden.

This is a frustrating conundrum because rules are hard to get along with once they’re made.  As surely as one person will do something stupid there will be many others to whom the new rule does not apply and seems absolutely illogical.  It’s the classic case of the bad apple ruining the bunch.

A good example is a shellfish allergy warning that I observed printed in bold on the menu of a restaurant called “The Lobster Pond”.  Someone, knowing full well that they were allergic to shellfish, strolled right past the massive word “LOBSTER” printed on the ten foot tall sign out front, around the huge statue of a lobster greeting guests at the front door, through the lobster fishing décor inside the dining room, and plopped down at a table prior to having a severe reaction to the food available at the restaurant.  The result, I imagine, was a lawsuit based on the claim that the poor soul wasn’t warned that there might be lobster served within the establishment.  And so the rest of us from now until the end of time will sit down, open the menu, and read a mandated warning that “The Lobster Pond” serves lobster, and wonder aloud, “What in the world…?”

Someone is out there compiling a book that contains a record of every act of stupidity or blatant abuse of freedom and they’re setting a rule against the offense.  These rules are what we see as fine print.  Sometimes the fine print protects the act of stupidity, as does the rule that the shellfish eatery must warn guests of shellfish instead of the rule requiring guests with shellfish allergies to use better judgment.  Most of the time fine print is so prohibitive that adherence to the rules results in paralysis.  Consider any example of terms and agreements you’ve encountered.  You will more than likely break most of the rules because there are too many to remember.  But they’re there.  Every day we’re walking through a web of fine print that we never see or think about.

That fine print, however, is no longer latent self-protection.  It has been fashioned into a weapon and it can be used against you and me and everyone else.  There are people who specialize in knowing the fine print and they have become very good at using this exhaustive knowledge as an extortion-style business model.  Should they choose to point the guns at you, you’ll find yourself in quite the quagmire.

I am currently entangled in just such a quagmire regarding the use of our own farm property.  When one thread of fine print is touched the whole web instantly constricts and you realize pretty quickly that you’ve never lived an honest day in your life according to the creeps who record all the rules.  It goes without saying that being on the brunt end of such vicious rule-mongering creates a strong desire to never encounter another human being again.  And therein lies the problem.

Loneliness is plaguing modern society, from the very old to the very young and most people in between.  Individuals lack relationships and the void gets filled with unhealthy habits that lead to violence, disdain, destruction, depression, and general lack of vigor.  It seems strange that relationships are difficult to find considering the numerous activities available for folks to engage in during free time.  Can’t lonely people simply go and do something?

The answer is no, not in the purest sense of togetherness.  Structured activities have been so affected by frivolous fine print – lobster warning in a lobster restaurant – that they are clearly artificial, not able to develop character that reflects the unique people who collectively embody the experience.  We go for a drink of pure life and find it polluted.  To try and avoid the commercialized entertainment experience is illegal in one way or another.  As a result, everyone is wary of everyone else.

It would be good work of the politicians to remove the clout behind the fine print.  Certainly every healthy society has boundaries but when they become so powerful that they can be used to destroy individuals and, thus, society, by way of torrential enforcement there is a problem.  People desperately need to get together in friend groups.  We all need something to work on that uses different talents and personalities.  We need to totally accept personal risk: Those hosting need to accept the risk that Frank will probably destroy some of their property “because nobody told me not to” and Frank needs to accept the risk that he will be beaten over the head with a stick for being such a fool, and let life go on like that.  We need a little head space underneath all the rules so that we can live together.